


The Bondage of Certain Ribbons

by MercuryGray



Series: The Royal Tigress [5]
Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: F/M, Not Suitable/Safe For Work, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Shameless Smut, Slow Burn, Strip Tease
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 08:43:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7750921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recently arrived in America as a humble Lieutenant in his Majesty's Army, the last thing Ross Poldark wants is to bring any undue attention to himself. But it seems attention is going to find him when one of London Society's most infamous women decides to take an interest. </p><p>And what Lavinia Montrose wants, she usually gets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bondage of Certain Ribbons

**Author's Note:**

> Someone on tumblr posted a picture of Aidan Turner as Masterpiece Classic's most recent Poldark, and Lavinia batted her eyelashes and purred very convincingly ...and then this happened. 
> 
> And let me tell you, Ross and Lavinia are a ton of fun to write. 
> 
> So we have this! My apologies on my kind of terrible grasp of Ross's backstory/reasons for enlisting -- everything I read seems to suggest something different.
> 
> This story takes place in New York and preceeds Lavinia's intrigues in Philidelphia, which you can read more of in the rest of The Royal Tigress series. It also has a bit of Lavinia's backstory, which I'm sure some of her fans will be interested to read.
> 
> There is, close readers will see, just the slightest touch of TURN crossover in this piece, taking place, as most of it does, in Robert Townsend's boardinghouse.

_If I were not in love with Mopsa, thou shouldst take_ __  
_no money of me; but being enthralled as I am, it_ __  
_will also be t_ ** _he bondage of certain ribbons_** and gloves.  
\--The Winter's Tale, Act IV, scene IV

  
_A narrow compass, and yet there_

_Dwelt all that’s good, and all that’s fair;_

_Give me but what this ribbon bound,_

_Take all the rest the sun goes round.  
_ \--On a Girdle, EDMUND WALLER

* * *

  


Ross Poldark took another glass from a passing servant and tried his hardest to banish, as one of his brother officers had put it, “that deuced glower of his.” But why should he not be glowering, or scowling, or frowning, or whatever one wanted to call it? It was a monstrously indecent thing, to expect a group of officers fresh off the boat from England to attend a party in the usual high spirits -- and a costume party, no less! Of course _they_ were not in costume, a week not having been sufficient time to introduce themselves to the tailors native to New York, and that only made the business worse, in Ross’s eyes, for they stood out like sore thumbs in the midst of the other guests, their regimental red coats serving only to make them look like monumental bores.

 

“Oh, cheer up, Poldark!” Joe Osbourne encouraged, hitting his companion lightly on the arm. “Anyone would think your pocket had just been picked.”

 

“Or someone stole your girl,” another one of the officers, Gabriel Woodward, added merrily, his own glass quite empty. “It’s a party, man! Wine you don’t have to pay for -- and women, too! What’s the trouble in that?”

 

“No trouble at all,” Ross said lightly, watching the room with a cautious eye and keeping a tight hold on his own glass, still quite full. “Just not what I would have liked to be doing tonight, is all.”

 

“If there’s one thing you still need to learn about the Army, Poldark, it’s that when your commanding officer says “Jump”, you say “How high, sir?”, and when the general of all the British Forces in America demands your presence at a party, you smile, nod, and agree to drink his wine,” Joe said with a smile. “And roger his maids, if the occasion arises,” he added, making eye-contact with a very pretty red-head passing by with a tray. “Speaking of which…” He hooked his arm around the redhead's shoulders and steered her towards the circle of officers. “Hello, darling, are you free later? Joseph Osbourne, South Devonshires.”

 

The red-haired maid (a little older and rather more pretty than the usual specimens found in houses of this kind) smiled and studied Osbourne with a proprietary eye from under her cap, clearly weighing her options. “Can’t leave till the party’s over,” she said, her voice that curious half-formed accent that sounded so different to Ross’s ears after the burnished Cornish voices of his youth, or the measured tones of his uncle and cousins, brought up to use gentler language.  “Then there’s cleaning to do. Be very late, it would.”

 

“I’d wait up all night for you,” Osbourne said earnestly, while the rest of them rolled their eyes and tried not to laugh.

 

“Then there’s the Colonel who’s already asked,” she added, glancing across the room at an appropriately gold-braided officer, who smiled in her direction and even went so far as to rise from his chair when he saw the company in which she now held court, clearly ready to assert his rights. Osbourne’s face quickly fell, his arm dropping woodenly, and Ross, quite against his current mood, laughed along with the rest. She quickly slipped out, evidently back to the kitchen for more glasses, leaving Osbourne looking (and doubtless feeling) a fool.

 

“Cheer up, Osbourne,” Ross couldn’t help repeating. ‘Anyone would think your pocket had just been picked.” More laughter, and not from Osbourne.

 

“Some joke of which I should be made aware, gentleman?” Colonel Slater, the regiment’s commanding officer, asked jovially, joining the group. An older gentleman who in peacetime would have made an excellent country squire (a role he would doubtless return to, when he could sell his commission) Slater was the stuff younger sons buying into regiments dreamed of - obliging, lenient, and none too hard a taskmaster. Not a great mind when it came to battles, but for the truly lazy, confined to camp, he was a godsend. Ross did not particularly like him or dislike him -- he had joined the army merely to get away from home and the looming threat of prison for living a little too large in Truro, and in the early days a commander who did not demand much seemed a kind of blessing. But here, on this side of the ocean and with a rebel army regrouping outside of New York, Ross was beginning to wonder if it were not better to have some of that spit and polish. For these would be the men he would fight with -- die with, even -- and a bit of discipline never did any one any harm on a battlefield.

 

“Only that Osbourne’s trying to make a conquest, sir,” Woodward repeated lightly. Slater laughed.

 

“Oh, well done, young Osbourne. Fine place to do it, fine place to do it-- cream of New York society here tonight, I should think, and none of the rebel riff-raff. You mark my words, gentleman, and you mark them well -- there’ll be plenty of young ladies when this war is over looking for good husbands with plenty of ready capital looking to settle down and buy farms. Good land here-- enough for every man to have his own estate and farms, when this is over. Not bad at all, ‘pon my soul. Not bad at all.” And, wisdom dispensed, he clapped Ross, who was standing nearest him, on the shoulder, and went to continue his rounds.

 

“Well, you heard him, lads,” Woodward said with a smile. “Though mind you, you wouldn’t find such a pretty looking bunch of girls at home.” He glanced across the room at a knot of young ladies in earnest conversation, and sent his own smile their way, which made the one whose eye he met giggle and turn to her companions -- an easy feat. Named for an angel and just about as pretty as one, Ross had gotten a good idea that girls came very easily to Gabriel Woodward, and less easily to Joe Osbourne, who, with unremarkable hair, less height than Woodward and a tendency to rotundity, stood out less in a crowd. “Come on, Ross, which do you fancy? I think that little sprite in green’s got her eye on you.”

 

“None for me, thanks,” Ross said, casually glancing at the lady Woodward had pointed out, decked out like Titania the fairy queen with ivy in her hair.

 

“Oh, yes, of course, none good enough for our Lieutenant Poldark. None like the famous Elizabeth.”

 

“None at all,” Ross said loyally.

 

“Come on, man, it’s a party, not a bleeding parish dinner. You’re a thousand miles or more away, and who’s to know? ‘Spect your Elizabeth would be glad of the experience, when you get back to her,” Osbourne put in, eyeing the little sprite in green whom Woodward had pointed out as having an eye on Ross and raising his glass to her. She fluttered her fan a little and smiled, talking behind it to her friends. “Well, suit yourself. Woodward, shall we mount an attack on the other side of the drawing room?”

 

But before they could break away there was a general ringing of glasses as for a toast, and the party’s host stepped forth, looking resplendent in a costume that suggested Caesar the Conqueror, with laurels on his brow, his _fasces_ forgotten on a chair. “Gentleman, ladies -- your attention, if I may. Thank you all for coming this evening, and for such splendid work on your costumes -- the best efforts I have seen in a long time. You know, I think, that I was prepared to give a prize this evening to the winner -- a bottle of my best brandy to the gentleman, and a piece of exceptionally fine lace to the lady. So -- our winners!” He glanced around the room, waiting for effect. For the gentlemen -- Captain Malvern!”

 

Banquo’s ghost, successfully kitted out in bloody tartan and a pastry-white face, emerged from the crowd to general cheers to claim his bottle, taking pride of place next to the general.

 

“And, for the ladies...I must admit, this was quite a choice, there is such excellent variety here. But I am afraid I love a clever disguise -- and a cleverer maid to wear it. Where has Lady Lavinia gone to?”

 

Mutters in the crowd. “Lavinia? But there’s no one of that name here.” The room grew restless.

 

“Here, sir.” The company turned almost as one upon the voice, coming, unexpectedly, from one of the servants -- the red-haired maid that Osbourne had pulled aside earlier.  

 

“It is one matter to wear a fine dress and jewels and assume a character,” Sir William said, taking the maid’s hand with a smile. “But it takes a very good actress indeed to spend the entire evening in a room with a single person being any the wiser. Ladies and Gentleman, it is my very great honor to present Lady Lavinia Montrose, who has only recently joined us from Boston. The winner.”

 

Lady Lavinia removed her cap and curtseyed in fine style, accepting the packet of lace with polite interest and daintily kissing Sir William on the cheek to general confused applause.

 

“My god,” Osbourne looked mortified -- along with, it seemed, a great majority of the men in the room, who were only just realizing that the maid they’d casually been propositioning was, in fact, a titled member of the gentry. “ _Lady_ Lavinia?”

 

“Married, I think, if it’s the same woman they write about in London scandal sheets,” Woodward remembered. “Sir James Montrose, the banker, you know. More money than Croesus -- which explains why he can afford such a pretty wife. Lucky bastard.”

 

“You should take a lesson from the Lady, Major Andre,” Sir William was telling a tall, dashing blonde who could only be Major John Andre, the adjutant general. “A well-placed spy can hear all kinds of secrets.”

 

“Anything that would interest me here tonight, Lady Lavinia?” Andre asked in a measured tone.

 

“Nothing that I’m willing to share, Major,” Lavinia said with a thin smile. “But, for a price, of course…” she trailed off, as the two men smiled, taking her meaning. With her cap removed and a curl of hair falling over her shoulder in the accepted style, the full effect of her costume was broken, and she now looked a very handsome woman, clearly outshining the whole room regardless of her second-rate dress. The clock chimed the hour, and the party began to thin a little, guests heading home and officers returning to billets, thinking, doubtless, of tomorrow’s reveille and drill parades and all the various minutiae of army life.

 

“Lady Lavinia,” Osbourne reached out to touch her sleeve as she moved towards the door. She turned, full hauteur on and gave him a cool stare, the kind of gaze that turns fountains to ice.

 

“Lieutenant Osbourne.” Her voice had the cut-glass cadence of London in it, none of the softened Americanism that had marked her earlier speech in character, and Ross wondered at her skill at shaping her voice and remembering the name of a man who’d said all of ten words to her.

 

Joe balked, amazed that she had remembered his name and (somehow, unbelievably) discovered his rank, and tried to remember what he was going to say. “I do hope you’ll…”

 

“Forgive you? Lieutenant, that was part of the game. Though I must let you know,” she added, looking him over with a critical eye,  “you’re hardly my type.” And, judgement passed, she sailed past them to the front hall, leaving Osbourne flummoxed, and Ross and Woodward silent in amazement.

 

“My god, that’s a woman,” Gabriel said finally, watching her  shrug into a cloak and venture out into the night. “Look at you like you were dirt and you’d still want her to trample you.”

 

“Speak for yourself,” Osbourne said. “I’d still want her in bed. Come on, Ross, agree with me here.”

 

“I’ve no opinion of her,” Ross said fairly, draining his glass. “She’s outside of my league, surely, and shall stay there a while.”

 

He was trying so hard to keep his head, well aware that underneath he was just as enamored of the idea of having that flame-haired vixen in his bed as Osbourne or Woodward. He didn’t need more than his few minutes’ acquaintance to know her type, and that he was as vulnerable to it as dry tinder to the touch of a spark. He’d used Elizabeth like a talisman, his Lady Bountiful waiting for him at the end of the campaign -- but that woman was not Elizabeth, nor anything remotely like her. If they spoke of flowers, Elizabeth was an English rose, and Lavinia a hot-house orchid; of spirits, one was port wine, dark and sedate and familiar, and the other exceptionally fine brandy, which burned the throat and made a man’s blood jump up and beg strange things of him. And Ross wanted the brandy - the fire, the challenge of it.  Ross Poldark was a man who liked risks.

 

It was why he had joined the army, risking life and limb on one throw of God’s dice. Either he used his heroics to win a battlefield commission, come home better then when he had started and impress Elizabeth’s father that way -- or die in the attempt. To do anything less smacked to him of cowardice. And Ross Poldark was many things, but coward was not one of them.

 

But it was not cowardice that made him check himself where Lavinia Montrose was concerned. His Elizabeth was now too well known among the other officers, and he hated to be seen along with them, with all their petty flirtations. He felt older than most of them, and was treated older, too, the settled elder brother who dispensed sage advice about the wiles of women and the ways of the world. Most of them were young men fresh from the bosom of their family, with little experience in the world and in war, and he, with his dark looks and shaded past, and his talk of wrecking and prison and brawling, seemed a creature to be revered, and he wished to remain that way. If not giving in to the temptation offered by a titled peer with flame red hair and a cunning pair of eyes, well...then he would just have to bear it. He knew his vices -- and women of that sort were  most definitely one of them.

 

And stay she did -- for the outcome of the party seemed to presage things to come. Lady Lavinia Montrose was the talk of the town -- invited to every party and every officer’s mess, the name on everyone’s lips and the face behind everyone’s eyes. More than one whore in town started sporting red hair, and more than one loyalist daughter began to ask her dressmaker for riding frocks ‘like Lady Lavinia Montrose wears’ and hats favoring her style.

 

Women wanted to emulate her, and men wanted to have her -- but no one, it seemed, was quite succeeding on that score. Even handsome Major Andre, whom everyone agreed seemed to have some kind of god-like power of attraction, did not seem enough to tempt her. Oh, she dined with the officers and flirted and kissed and cuddled, but did not openly show the favor of an entire night’s company -- if, that is, she bestowed it at all. There were bets, of course -- an entire company of dragoons had a pool to see who might be first to claim a garter, the stakes now grown quite high, nearly the price of a full commission. And with each party and concert the anticipation grew.

 

Ross, for his own part, avoided her, content to watch Woodward, Osbourne and the rest run themselves ragged trying to win her favor. It would never work -- women like Lavinia lived to be adored, thriving on the attention itself, the thrill of the chase, rather than the various dances and figures of actually being in love. And, too, there was the matter of money -- Lady Lavinia lived in style, and a lieutenant’s pay was no good for that.

 

In no mood to dance this particular evening, he’d taken refuge in the cardroom, winning a tidy sum at Loo before finding himself losing the same in several increasingly awful hands of piquet, until, hoping his luck might change, the hand was over and he was out some twenty-five guineas -- a titanic sum for man like him on officer’s pay.

 

“Will you take my note?” he asked, glancing tentatively at his opponent. Captain Clements was an inveterate gambler, and had separated more than one officer from his pay, his watch or some other keepsake usually reckoned too dear to part with.

 

“Not usually the thing, sir...but as it’s you, Poldark, and I know you’re good for it…” Clements sent a servant for paper, Ross scratching out the requisite _I owe the bearer of this note the sum of …_ and affixing his name below. But just as he was finishing the rest of the table stood. “Lady Lavinia!”

 

The redhead was making her way over from a game of whist, surveying the company with the most radiant of smiles. “Captain Clements! What is this evening’s game, pray tell?”

 

“Piquet, madam. Have you a mind to play? Our stakes are not quite as high as those in London, I fear,” he added with a flatterer’s practiced smile.

 

“Too high for Lieutenant Poldark, it seems,” she observed, queening over Ross’s shoulder with a regal smile. He did not wish to meet her eye, rising from the table and passing the now-finished note to Clements. “Yes, indeed, Captain, I think I shall.”

 

“And the stakes, madam?” Clements asked, watching the crowd that inevitably gathered.

 

“I shall play for Lieutenant Poldark’s note,” she said promptly, settling into his vacated chair and causing more than one raised eyebrow in the room. Ross froze. _Madam, what are you playing at?_ He stopped his progress across the room and lingered, hoping he would not be an object of attention as the game began.

 

“Madam, I hardly think -

 

Lavinia smiled sweetly. “You forget I am married to a banker, Captain, I know good debt from bad. If I lose, I shall pay you the sum over again -- twenty-five guineas, wasn’t it? -- and you shall have lost nothing. If I win, the note goes to me and I shall collect from the Lieutenant. Either way you are spared some expense and a deal of bother.”  She looked so comfortable and so unlikely to move from her recently taken seat that Clements assented, picking up the cards to deal them. A crowd gathered, and Ross, too curious now to leave, hung near the back, watching the scene with wary eyes. Lavinia Montrose never did anything without a plan -- so what was her plan here?

 

Piquet was, on its best days, a tricky game, made all the moreso when both of the players are very good -- and Lavinia Montrose, it was transpiring, was very, very good indeed. Oh, she made a good show of shuffling through the first two _parties_ with fumbling hands, but won the third on what looked to be blind luck -- and then came out wildly successfully in the last three, winning handily to wild applause while Clements handed over the slip, not even bothering to ask for the honor of a second chance. She rose, nodding pleasantly to Clements and withdrawing from the room, leaving Ross, looking hastily around, to follow, wondering what on earth she was playing at.

 

“Lady Lavinia!” He ran her to ground before she’d crossed too much of the room. “You threw the first two deals to make Clements let his guard down,” he accused, not sure of what else he might say. She smiled.

 

“So you noticed? Piquet is not usually my game -- I prefer whist. More straightforward. Still, it hardly matters. You no longer owe twenty five guineas you do not possess, Lieutenant.”

 

“But why?” Ross asked.

 

“Throw the first two hands? Captain Clements is a mediocre player masquerading at being a good one. He overestimates himself -- and underestimates his opponents. The game is quite simple if you can remember all the cards.”

 

Ross’s mind staggered, trying to conceive of being able to remember every play of a 32 card deck, keep score at the same time, and make out the figures on what it would take to lose a hand badly and still make it up again. But that wasn’t quite what he had meant.

 

“No, not that - I meant why play for my note,” he explained, wondering if he would like the answer she gave. She smiled.

 

“Oh, that -- well. Now you are in _my_ debt, Lieutenant, and I may chose whichever time I like to collect.”

 

“I don’t have twenty-five guineas,” Ross repeated, trying to be plain.

 

She smiled. “Then I shall have to take something else from you.” Her eyes glittered. The quartet began a new piece, and she smiled. “A dance, I think.” She held out her hand, waiting for him to accept, still smiling with that damnable grin of hers, the one that made a man sure she knew all his secrets already. Sourly, Poldark took her hand and bowed, slightly, leading her into the figure still wondering what her motives could be. He would not talk to her -- would not even smile or meet her eye, too proud to give her an inch of ground. When the dance ended, he broke away, crossing to the refreshments table to quickly pour himself a glass of punch, downing it with equal speed.  She followed, appearing at his elbow still in extremely good spirits.

 

“There now -- I have something no other woman in the room can claim,” she pronounced proudly. “A dance with handsome Lieutenant Poldark. And you have the coveted honor of having danced with me.”

 

“Not one I wished for, madam,” Ross said quickly, his voice showing the strain.

 

She paused, studying him. “In my experience, there are two reasons men avoid me, Lieutenant,” Lavinia observed from her place at his elbow. “One is that they’re ....not interested in my charms.”

 

“And the other?” Ross asked, acutely aware that he could smell her perfume, she was standing so close.  

 

“That they’re more interested than they want to admit.” She smiled. “And little bird tells me you like red-heads, Lieutenant. Especially difficult ones.”

 

He took a breath, trying to keep himself steady. It had been one night, one ill-advised night where Woodward had talked him into making a trip to one of the better houses near Holy Ground and having a night of old-fashioned debauchery. Woodward knew the place well, and had taken one of his usual girls, but when the madam had asked, coyly, what Ross fancied, the pale-faced sprite had smiled from the corner and he’d pointed at her. Her hadn’t been as rich in color as Lavinia’s, but that had hardly signified. How should she know about that? And why should she be asking? “And why should that be any of your concern?”

 

“Because I like dark, difficult men,” she said with a smile. His concentration broke and he looked up at her, eyes hawkish at her implication. She reached into her dress and drew his note forth from in between her dress and stays, handing it back to him -- the paper was still warm from her body’s heat. “Yours, I think. I pay my debts in full.” And, still smiling, she turned and left, the paper practically burning in Ross’s hand, smelling faintly of her perfume.

 

He took a deep breath, one that he wished did not smell strongly of bergamot and clove, and tried to think of Elizabeth. It did him no good -- that smirk of Lavinia’s burned at him. Sparks and dry tinder indeed.

 

Still, Ross could count his blessings -- It was not often he had to tolerate her company, and even then, there was always leaving a party early. There were precious few social occasions at which a lowly Lieutenant will be missed.

 

Garrison duty in New York was dull - Washington and his rag-tag army having decamped (and scattered, more or less) there was little in the way of action to be had for several months. So while the Generals discussed amongst themselve the various stratagems and feints they would use to draw out the Rebels, Ross and his fellow officers read and gambled and wrote letters and drilled and paraded and tried not to look too idle, lest they be called upon to perform the duties for which they were ostensibly being paid.

 

A summer storm was just blowing itself into a fury when Ross left headquarters that evening, wind whipping rain over the cobbles of the road i driving sheets, the kind of weather that gives a man and his cloak no quarter against it. The streets were nearly deserted, the only sound the dedicated patter of feet trying to find a way home to a warm fire and the equally dedicated patter of rain on rooftops. By the time Ross made his way back to his billet, a small boarding house run by a fellow called Townsend, he was soaked through and feeling it. The door opened grudgingly, and Ross was forced to shove it shut against the rain, glad that he’d finally made it home.

 

“Nasty out tonight, isn’t it, Poldark?” someone observed from across the room, laughing at the sorry state of Ross’s hat and uniform jacket.

 

“Amen to that,” Ross agreed darkly. “Any chance of a fire in my room, Townsend?” he asked, making his way over to the modest counter over which the proprietor transacted all his business.

 

“I believe it’s already been seen to, sir,” Townsend said blandly, looking up from his washing for the barest of moments. Even more taciturn than Poldark, the Quaker seemed the least likely of hosts -- but he ran a clean and modest establishment, for which Ross was very grateful.   _Already?_ Ross wondered at that, but took himself and his dripping wet clothes upstairs, the stairs squelching at every step. _What the devil does he mean by that?_

 

He turned his key in the lock at the door, opening his room to find that Townsend was correct -- there was a fire going already. And, stranger still, a young woman, kneeling in front of it tending it, her back to the door. _That’s not Townsend’s usual girl._ She stood when the door opened, her job evidently done.

 

“Evenin’, Lieutenant. Fancy getting out of those wet clothes?” Ross hardly had time to wonder over what the woman was doing in his quarters when she turned, and the firelight threw out the now familiar face of Lavinia Montrose, dressed once more in her maid’s costume, amended now with an apron and shawl and a more serviceable cap, as though she were running errands instead of serving at a party.

 

“How did you get in here?” Ross asked, feeling very vulnerable while this woman stood between him, his dry clothes, and his bed.

 

“Picklock,” she said simply. Ross almost wanted to be stunned by this news -- yet somehow, the idea that the Lady could break into private rooms (and strongboxes) at will did not surprise him in the slightest. “Couldn’t have the innkeeper asking questions if I asked for your room opened-- so I... intimated you’d given me a key.” She smirked at this. “Trust a Quaker to frown so sanctimoniously.”

 

“And what do you want?” Ross asked, his patience already thin from the rain and the enforced idleness of the last several weeks. It was not like him to sit and gossip, and he had longed for action, any action at all, the candle of his determination burning lower and lower as the weeks went by. If one of the generals had come asking for men to lead a patrol, an ambush, a scouting party, any deed that promised danger, he would have done it, regardless of the cost. And this, this here, this woman and everything she stood for, this was danger of the highest sort, and Ross craved it, though he knew he shouldn’t.

 

“Oh, the same thing you want, Lieutenant, I expect. Dry clothes and a warm bed and a relief from boredom. For you are bored, I think.”

 

“I was warned about you,” Ross said, trying to change the subject. She laughed at that.

 

“And what have they said about me, Lieutenant?”

 

“That you’re a woman who only works for her own ends. That you’re powerful -- that you use men’s secrets against them.”

 

“True, true, and...true,” she allowed, untying her apron and taking off her maid’s cap, as though she were planning on getting quite comfortable. Ross’ clothes were still dripping, a small puddle forming under his feet, and his shirt was sticking uncomfortably to his back.

 

“Which makes a man, a poor man,  ask himself what the great Lavinia Montrose wants with him,” Ross said, trying to sound bolder than he felt, dripping pathetically like some street waif. “Why me, when you could have your pick of the whole army. There’s richer men  -- and with better secrets, too. Why not go back to Major Andre, or Sir William, or General Burgoyne ? I’m sure they’ve better beds.”

 

“How little you understand women, Lieutenant,” she said with a smile. “Do you imagine I like being pawed and petted by the likes of the Sir Williams of the world? I do it because _they_ like it -- because to be an object of my interest makes them out as important, and to play hard to get makes the game fun. They know me as you do -- as a woman who trades in secrets. And it strokes their pride, to know that they they have something I want.”

 

“Major Andre’s a handsome man,” Ross suggested.

 

“Major Andre,” she said with a smile, “imagines that if he wins me he can use me -- and that I cannot allow. It serves me better to keep him where I want him -- an arm’s length away.”

 

“So what am I, then? A diversion? A plaything?”

 

“A choice,” she said. “For no one but myself. Are women not allowed passions as men have, Poldark? Or must we simply be content to let ourselves be bought and sold like chattel? I’m here because I wish to be here -- and I can be gone half as quickly if you say you want me gone.”

 

“And if I say that you can stay?” Ross asked, trying to rein himself in, trying to let logic, cool, calm, collected logic, guide his actions rather than the passion that always seemed to be his downfall.

 

Her lips curled. ‘Well, then, Lieutenant, then I would start by showing my gratitude and making myself helpful -- getting you out of those wet clothes, perhaps, for starters.”

 

A choice, a choice, there was always a choice. On the one hand, bachelorhood and the memory of Elizabeth, far away in Cornwall, Elizabeth whose indecision had exiled him to America in the first place-- and on the other, flame-haired Lavinia who knew her mind and was prepared to act upon it.

 

So, she wished for him, was that it? Wanted him? Well, if that was how she wanted to play, then Ross could dance to her tune -- but if she wanted to come to his room in a maid’s clothes, then he would play the overbearing, impatient master. _It’ll be no different than a Truro whore._ And he’d had plenty of those, before Elizabeth had moved into his life -- and plenty since, after he’d left Cornwall. Celibacy was not a virtue he particularly liked. _“_ Take my coat, then,” he ordered, holding his arms out as he would for a servant. _If you want me, Lavinia Montrose, then take me as I wish to be seen -- not your plaything. I take no orders from you._

 

Her lip curled, and she came to do as she was bid, taking his coat, first, and draping it near the fire so it would dry. Then his stock, and his waistcoat, also laid out. His shirt she pulled carefully from the waistband of his breeches. “You’ll need to get out of those boots,” she offered, watching him closely as he sat down and held out one foot, and then the other, so she could pull his riding boots loose, unbuttoning the knees of his breeches so she could peel his soaking stockings from his feet. When both were off, she did not let his foot return to the floor, but instead kept it in her lap, stroking circles around the arch of his foot in a way that seemed as erotic as if she’d taken him in her mouth -- which, as she looked up at him from her seat on the floor from in between his slightly spread eagled legs, she seemed perfectly prepared to do. “And your breeches, sir?” she asked, the intimation clear in her voice. _Shall you like me to undo them with my teeth?_ Her smile seemed to ask.

 

But Ross wasn’t quite ready for that yet. “No,” he ordered, pushing her away from him and withdrawing his foot from her hands. “Strip.” _Now let’s see what you’re really made of, Lady Lavinia._

 

Another one of her famous smirks, and she rose from her place on the floor, unpinning her bodice and laying it aside with as much precision as she’d discarded his jacket, turning away from him to untie her petticoats. He was almost tempted to order her to face him, to look at him, but then he realized she was undressing as if no one was watching, as if he were being treated, like a voyeur through the keyhole, to the sight of his chambermaid, in her own chamber, getting ready for bed. He could feel his pulse quickening at his temples, watching her remove one petticoat, and then another, stepping out of them carefully and setting them aside. Then her pockets, on a tape around her waist, and finally her stays, unlacing them in slow, careful motions, until those, too, fell away, and she stood before him in her chemise and stockings, her linen so thin and fine he could see the dark whirl of hair between her legs, and the red of the ribbons she’d used as garters to keep her stockings up. But she wasn’t done yet -- for now she stood in front of him as though she were facing a mirror and carefully undid her hair, until it was all a mess of curls around her shoulders, and then reached up and untied her garters, shimmying her stockings down around her ankles. She paused, considering, and then off came the chemise, too, and there she stood, naked as the Italian painter’s Venus and just as pretty.

 

Ross stood, finally remembering his legs. “My shirt is wet,” he observed matter of factly. “Take it off for me.”

 

She stepped closer, smiling still,  circling her arms around him to grasp his shirt and pull it over his head, the tips of her breasts just barely brushing along his chest. “And my breeches,” he added, which only made her grin more. She resumed her kneeling posture, head just at the level of his hips and the fall of his breeches, a single finger dipping into his waistband to peel the wet garment away from his skin, her fingers working blindly at the lacings that kept the back tight while her breath curled benignly over the sensitive skin just below his navel. It was all he could do to keep from wrapping a hand in her hair and begging her to have use of him, as she undid one button, and then two, and three, of his breeches, peeling them down, her fingers stroking the sinews of the backs of his legs that again made him wish to take her head in his hands and make very ill use of her.

 

No, he mustn’t - he was better than that. Better than those other men who doubtless felt it their right to use her, as she used them. He would not stoop so low - she’d expect that of him. But it was taking every ounce of patience he possessed to stand still, and let her take him out of his clothes, and then raise herself up, still gently breathing, hands light on his calves, his thighs, the round of his buttocks. His muscles gave an involuntary twitch, and he wished for something, anything, to hold onto as she merely knelt before him, breathing. Then she moved, her lips landing, not where he wished them, but on the inside of his leg, her hair brushing him as she laid kiss after featherlight kiss on the skin of his thigh, his muscles trembling with tension. One leg, and then the plain of his skin below his navel, his flesh growing harder and more insistent where it nestled against her cheek, hair, throat. And then she started humming, the sounds of a woman in the throes of pleasure, and he grew harder still, his hands finally finding her shoulders, wanting so badly to urge her head elsewhere, letting her finish her kisses and draw her head away, looking up at him with well-deep eyes.

 

“Get on the bed,” he ordered, trying to master his own breathing for a moment as she rose, still smiling, and did as she was told.

 

“Up or down?” she asked, crawling over his pillows and presenting a very nice view of her backside, looking kittenishly over her shoulder. His legs were in torment, and it hurt to even think of movement that was not the well-timed arch of hips into hips.

 

“Down,” he urged, his urge now simple. It would have been so easy to take her from behind, like a stallion at stud,  but she wanted that, he thought, and he was not going to give her want she wanted. She laid back, hair splayed out on his pillows, and let her legs drop open, inviting him in, twirling one of her long red-gold curls between her fingers, testing his patience.

 

“Well?” she asked. “Or should I do it myself?” Her free hand slipped over her skin, a single finger dipping inside, working at herself, and she let out the most ungodly moan, eyes closing and head arching back. “Oh, _Ross.”_

 

It undid him. In a half a moment he was astride her, taking her hand away and replacing it with his own, probing and stroking at her until she made the sound again, deeper in pitch and wholly by surprise, no mere act of titillation but of genuine pleasure, her whole body arching up and kissing him, fiercely, on the soft skin just below his clavicle, nails coming up and digging into his sides. Ross had heard what others called her, only once, and dismissed it, thinking it only a reference to her hair, but as their love-play turned into a barely disguised fight, he began to see why some men named her the Tigress.  Lavinia Montrose _bit -_ and hard, too.

 

And, God help him, he liked it.

He was just hard enough to enter her when she rocked at him, rolling him to one side, using the surprise of another well-aimed kiss (and the momentary distraction of  her hand around his buttock) to gain the upper hand, straddling his hips and pinning his hands to the bed. “Not tired, are we?” she asked, her smile enough to make devils weep.

 

“Never,” Ross spat back. Another smirk, and then she was letting his hands go and easing herself onto him, her eyes closing as though she were thinking about what she should do next. Did she want to kill him? Ross felt like he would die until she rolled her hips, finally, once, twice, building up her rhythm in quick succession to ride him as expertly as if he were her horse, smiling down at him until he felt himself spend in her, unable to keep himself from crying out, his hands, wrapped loosely around her thighs, tightening as his body finally found its release, every inch of flesh slackening back against his sheets again. He let his head roll back on the pillow, trying to find his breath.

 

She was magnificent. There was no other word for it. She might have been an ancient Celtic queen, her hair a wild mess of red-gold around her shoulders, and he her captive slave -- save that he had hardly been slavish, though he wished now to be. If Lavinia Montrose had beguiled him before, she entrapped him now. But as he lay back, trying to breathe, trying to remember how one was supposed to speak after these things, what one was supposed to say, something about the business troubled him -- for a woman that pretty hardly places herself at a man’s disposal as she had done without some end in mind. Especially a woman like Lavinia Montrose.

 

“That wasn’t for you,” he accused once he remembered how to form a sentence again, his voice ragged.

 

“Says who?” she asked, trying to moderate her own breathing a little as she eased herself off him, climbing over his hips to sit at his side for a moment, skin shiny with sweat.

 

“Man with more experience who knows better,” Ross said simply, moving over so she could lie down if she wished. Suddenly a thought occurred to him. “You were testing me.” She wouldn’t have teased him so, if she’d been thinking of her pleasure alone -- she’d have been quick about the business. _As a man is,_ he thought to himself, remembering the two-penny whores whistling from Holy Ground, calling their rates and the services they offered.  But she had teased -- and that made him wonder.

 

She laughed, raking the hair out of her face  and rising from the bed to look for his washbasin. “Yes, I suppose I was,” she acknowledged, talking over her shoulder.

 

“And did I pass?” Ross asked, admiring her backside from his vantagepoint on the bed again and considering the possibilities offered by such, if the chance presented itself again. _Please say there’ll be another chance._

 

That was cause for a turn and a smile in his direction. “Very well indeed.” She went back to washing herself. “I admire patience in men.”

 

“I gathered as much,” he said, turning towards her a little to watch her. “I imagine most of your paramours are somewhat lacking in that quality, then?”

 

“Hmm.”  But she did not deny him.

 

 _So that was her motive. See, you were right not to take her like a whore._ He continued to study her, observing the curve of her back, the subtle working of the muscles of her arms as she scrubbed at her legs, cleaning herself. Her hair seemed a creature all its own, and he wanted to bury his face in it -- as he buried himself elsewhere on her person, perhaps?

 

But only if she’d let him -- for to put her on a chain at his beck and call would be to lose a thing of rare beauty.

 

Did the other men she let into her bed know, or see it? Or were they too dazzled by their own good fortune at having snared such a creature that they did not question why she let them do it? And -- perhaps more importantly -- with such beauty as she had, and such a comfortable marriage, why did she let men treat her so?

 

“Why do you do it?” He wondered aloud. She looked at him, confused. “Let them all play for you?”

 

Clean now, she turned back to him, climbing onto the bed and folding her knees  around so she could sit next to him. “What questions you ask,” she observed with a smile, but he could tell he had done well, and she approved, for it wasn’t a mocking smile at all, but an interested one. “Did anyone tell you why I married Sir James?”  She smiled at his confusion. “Ah, but they wouldn’t have known, I think. It was a gambling debt of my father’s.” Her lip curled at his surprise, and she went on, her face curiously blank.  “Yes, he staked me, poor fool, in a game of cards. Well -- one does not become a banker without a cool head for numbers, and of course Sir James won. I was -- sixteen, seventeen? He was forty.” She sighed at the memory. “It was a bad match, for me, at that age, anyway -- One’s head is filled with all this romantic nonsense about handsome young lords and pirates and the like. But he liked me, and my...spirit, if you’ll call it that -- and  gave me plenty of the freedom that a growing girl needs. He was patient with me, more tutor than husband.”

 

“And he didn’t…”

 

“No,” she said, sounding grateful. “Not until I asked. I was too young to wonder why.  But he had other ways of showing his affection for me. New dresses -- new jewels. I was a plaything to be dressed and cossetted. And I didn’t mind - I didn’t know any differently. One night, I went to a party and overheard someone speaking about one of the King’s enterprises -- a careless few words. I mentioned it to Sir James in passing, and thought nothing of it. The next week I had a new string of diamonds. He’d turned my careless word into a cool three thousand pounds.” She smiled at the memory. “And I quickly learned to like a profit. So yes, Lieutenant, I will let them paw and preen, and take whatever whispers they throw at me. It’s all a game to them; they know I play it, and they like to see how much they can debase me before they give me what I want. What they don’t know is how much they tell me even when they’re not speaking. And a few drunk kisses from a few men past their prime leave me all the time I like for... more interesting pursuits.”

 

She smiled at this last bit, and Ross, softened, realized she meant him. Him, who had let her come to his bed with every thought of making her beg for him when all the while it had been her seeing if she could make him beg for her.

 

“Ross.” His name sounded strange, coming out of his own mouth, and she looked at him, quizzical. “Call me Ross,” he said, more question than command. “This isn’t one of your drawing rooms.” _If you can tell me your life’s story, Lavinia Montrose, you can call me by my first name._

 

“Ross.” The sound of his name from her lips made him flush with pleasure, for the only other time she’d said his name, his first name, was when she’d touched herself and thrown her head back in pleasure -- whether feigned or real he still wasn’t quite sure. It was strange -- he felt like he’d known her for years, lying in bed watching her. Evenly matched, some people might have said -- for he felt he fit together better with Lavinia than the dozens of women he’d known in Cornwall. People always assumed the worst of him, knowing of his wild, misspent youth -- but underneath that there was softness, and a tenderness for the things he really loved -- and so it was with Lavinia. She could have left him when she’d had her fun -- but she hadn’t. They were sitting and talking instead. _She’s had no one to share that secret with,_ Ross realized. _A world of everyone else’s lies and subterfuges, and she has no place for her own truth._ The silence between them seemed sacred, now, a deep trust he should not break, on pain of death -- or worse, the loss of this woman’s trust, which seemed a rarer gift than life itself.

 

For a while there was only the sound of the fire, sputtering for attention, and the rain outside, still going hammer and tongs against the roof. Ross was filled with questions, all the things he’d wanted to know since they’d first met in the General’s front room, and as he’d watched him play her games with all the others. Other men might long for her body -- but Ross had that, and found he wanted more -- of her life, her secrets, the pathways of her mind. “Is that how you became so good at cards? Your husband?”

 

“Yes. It amused him to teach me things -- to remember names, or draw faces  from memory-- or how to count cards. Thank heaven I was a bright child, or I expect I would have gotten more of the birch.”

 

“He hit you?” He didn’t know why he suddenly felt protective of this woman for an injury some fifteen years past.

 

“No,” Lavinia said quickly. “He wasn’t that sort. Disappointment, coldness -- he’d use those before a whip.”

 

“Do you love him?” Ross asked the question before he’d even thought about it.

 

“In our own way,” she allowed. “There is affection between us, but not...of the conjugal kind. Sir James has little interest in the marriage bed. He never has. He always encouraged me to be quite free to do as I wish in that regard - as he is.”

 

“And is his taste for patient women?” he asked, feeling glib.

 

“He rather more enjoys impatient men,” she said, letting Ross blush again and smiling knowledgeably at his blushes. “Something I learned earlier than I should have,” she added with a rueful smile. “I walked in on him and an...acquaintance over his desk one afternoon. Ran out of the room crying. He was so sweet to me afterward,” she remembered fondly. “But he was always careful to tell me that it wasn’t me that was at fault -- that he’d always been like that, and always would be, and that whatever my...needs...he’d always support me, as his wife. I’d discuss them with him, my...liaisons. To see if he approved. He rarely did, in the early days. But I learned.” she looked pleased with this. “He’d approve of you,” she said, looking down at him.

 

Ross wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, and he was sure it showed in his face. “Not on looks,” she added. “He likes fair hair. But he knows my temperament, and he knew I wasn’t a docile lamb to be lead about like a prize at the village fair. Some of my early lovers wanted that. And I tired of it quickly -- as he knew I would. He made sure I learned my own mind.”

 

“The Tigress,” Ross repeated, more to himself than her. She laughed.

  
“Even here,” she said, amused, and he nodded. “And what is your assessment, Lieutenant? Is it a fitting name?”

 

“Infinitely,” he judged, and the surety in his voice made her laugh again. What a different creature she was, here, in the private of the bedchamber with the glow of pleasure around her! Gone the sharp wit and flashing eyes of the drawing room and the dance floor, the claws of the Tigress replaced with the sleek sides of the housecat, waiting to be pulled onto one’s lap and petted. Especially after such a sorry tale as that. _You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever come across,_ he wanted to tell her. _And I’d try to keep you, if I thought I could_  “Come here,” he asked, and she, surprisingly, complied, climbing astride him to sit, gently, on his stomach. “No, not like that -- like this.” He urged her off him, moving her next to him while he rose up on his knees, giving her the lion’s share of the bed. “They should call you Venus, and worship you,” he said softly, almost reverent as he kissed her, softly and tenderly, on her mouth, and the corners of her cheeks, moving down to her throat and the fine ridges of her collarbones.

 

She made a little noise of pleasure, and moved to take him in her hand, but he caught at her. “Not me, this time -- just you.” He moved her hands to his shoulders, and she responded by threading her fingers into his curls, massaging his scalp in as his kisses traveled lower until he, too, could tease the inside of her legs, her muscles quivering in expectation. But he was not about to let her get off easy. He spread her apart a little with his fingers and then, when her eyes were closed, savoring, he let his lips in. She let out a great gasp of surprise, her hand tightening on his hair and her muscles suddenly tense. _Yes, let me surprise you, Lavinia. Let me worship you as you should be worshiped._ Her breathing was shallow and sharp, her hands saying everything she obviously did not wish her lips to say, save for a groan of satisfaction when he made her climax. “Well?” he asked, looking up at her over the plain of her stomach, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as if he were challenging her, somehow.

 

“You had a good tutor,” she shot back, eyes dark with pleasure as she studied him, letting him lay himself out next to her and pull the covers over them both. “Does she know?” she asked, her eyes still fixed on him. “The woman who gave you that ring,” she specified, fingers settling around the little twist of silver on his finger.

 

Suddenly he was cold. “Know what?” Ross asked, feeling, for the first time all evening, extremely vulnerable.

 

“About your rather remarkable talents in bed,” Lavinia said patiently. “But your face suggests not.” She captured his hand and held it up so she could study the ring, a gypsy studying palms for some glimpse of the future.  “It’s a pretty thing -- and fine silver, too, not a whore’s trinket. Which suggests an intended -- a nice girl, from a good family, I’m sure. Hardly likely to be the sort rolling in the hay before marriage. Am I wrong?”

 

“No.” Ross felt exposed.

 

“She’ll be too tame for you,” Lavinia predicted. “Men like you aren’t built for women like that. Most men like to master their wives -- but you wanted an equal.” she scraped his curls out of his face, smiling fondly. “And I rather much doubt she is yours.” She kissed him, turning over and tucking herself into the sheets, the conversation clearly at an end, leaving Ross to lie on his side of the bed considering what she’d said. There was something in Lavinia that spoke to him, her boldness and forthright nature but also the way she could dissemble, make someone believe one thing and mean another. There was, he felt, too much of that in his own life, too.

 

And Elizabeth had asked to wait -- not because she was unsure, but...but why? Some objection of her mother’s, probably. Mrs. Chynoweth had never made secret of the fact that she disliked Ross’s prospects, but Elizabeth did not bow totally to her mother’s wishes. Or did she? Something Lavinia said burned at him. _He made sure I knew my own mind._

 

Did Elizabeth know her own mind?  

 

It was a troubled sleep that Ross fell into that night, filled with angry, aging husbands and sharp-eyed, seething mothers, every one of them multiplying a hundredfold and berating him for being what he was -- a lowly officer with nothing to offer the woman he was trying to take from them, who sometimes wore Elizabeth's face and sometimes Lavinia’s.

 

When he woke, his room was still the riot they’d left in last night and the curtains were open, the window cracked just enough to let in some of the early morning breeze. Of Lavinia there was little sign other than an indent in one of his pillows and a few strands of hair, clinging to his linens. He sighed, plumping the pillow and retrieving his shirt from where Lavinia had folded it onto his chair. But there was something there that hadn’t been -- the ribbon from one of her garters, carefully folded. Ross picked it up and, without thinking, held it to his nose, faintly smelling bergamot. He smiled, and tucked it into the handkerchief in his pocket before heading downstairs. He’d skip breakfast today, he thought -- a dish of coffee, instead. All the better to avoid any neighbors who might have heard the noise from his room last night.

 

The coffeehouse was fairly packed with people, most of whom were wearing some form of regimental dress, and talking excitedly amongst themselves. “Something doing?” Ross asked the man nearest him, moving closer to the counter and laying down his penny for a dish of tea.

 

“Captain Drake claims he’s gone and got one of Lavinia Montrose’s garters. Someone sent for her maid before paying up.” Ross’s polite confusion made the man incredulous.  “Five hundred guineas, man! Surely you’ve heard about it.”

 

The wager! He didn’t realize it had gone quite that high. The ribbon in his pocket seemed suddenly hot. Five hundred guineas...temptation indeed.

 

“Shouldn’t be long now,” his new friend informed him. “Mind you, Drake looks pleased. Lucky bastard, if I were in his shoes.” Drake was a captain in the dragoons, sitting smugly in his gold braided regimentals with a little twist of ribbon on the table in front of him, laughing with his friends. The door opened, and the laughing, joking crowd turned a little, the men at the door suddenly silent.

“Lady Lavinia!” Someone called. The rest of the coffeehouse went dead, and Lavinia, resplendent in sprigged cotton, made her way into the room with all the natural grace of the Queen. _That head was on my pillow last night,_ Ross realized. The ribbon still burned -- and Drake’s smile was suddenly gone for a moment, though he fixed it back on as his apparent lover neared the table, the crowd parting for her and her fashionably wide skirts. They’d sent for the maid and gotten the real thing -- and of course she’d come. Who but Lavinia Montrose would court scandal so openly?

“Gentlemen. I hear someone here has something that belongs to me. Captain Drake.” She smiled secretively, and held out a hand.  Drake handed over the ribbon, looking a little less than cocky now. She inspected the pattern, turning it over and examining the length, before handing it back to him.

“So sorry -- not one of mine.” The room went into fits of laughter at the look on Drake’s face, found out before God and the rest of the regiment to be a liar of the first order. “Though ...I am missing one,” Lavinia observed, to no one in particular, her eyes sweeping the crowd and catching Ross’s eye for the briefest of moments. The room went dead silent. “It’s red.”

 

And, her explosive news dropped, she gave another of her signature smiles and swept out, leaving the rest of the coffeehouse abuzz with this latest development. The bet was well known by now -- that the Lady would say, as bold as brass, that there was someone, some lucky bastard out there, who was currently in possession of one of her garters through no act of subterfuge, who had probably had the sublime pleasure of untieing the damn thing as well, was too much for the room to stand. Ross considered his pocket.

 

“Five hundred guineas! Can you imagine?” Someone was saying. “For a ribbon!”

 

 _And a woman’s trust,_ Ross thought to himself. Five hundred guineas would buy a lot of things - a horse, a commission, a few new silk dresses and new garters to match. But some things, he estimated, were worth far, far more. He smiled, and tucked his handkerchief deeper into his pocket.

 

After all, she might just want it back.

**Author's Note:**

> So, if anyone came into this story expecting actual bondage, my apologies; the quote was just too good not to use.
> 
> Will there be more? Probably. I've been given the most delicious idea for another costume party (London, this time, after the war; Lavinia does so love costume balls, especially when they involve masks) involving settling a different debt, numerous social snubs of George Warleggan, a robe a la turque and Poldark as a dashing eastern emir. Sounds good, right?


End file.
